•Longer single-term begs the issues of accountability and free elections. It must be defeated
IKE Ekweremadu, deputy president of the Senate, appears starting a fresh campaign for elongated single executive tenures, instead of the present two four-year term limits. It was defeated before. It would be defeated again, if Nigeria must fulfill the most basic requirement of democracy: free elections.
In a newspaper interview, Senator Ekweremadu said his campaign for single tenure of five, six or seven years, whichever Nigerians found acceptable, was panacea for the crisis of succession, which had always rocked Nigeria’s democratic polity.
Saying it would at best be a temporary arrangement that could give way after Nigeria would have discovered her democratic temper, he made examples of South America which, at a time, had a rash of constitutional amendments sanctioning elongated single terms. Now that democracy has been deepened in those shores, he added, they have reverted to limits of two terms. He said that as the South Americans needed a democratic cool-off period then, Nigeria needs a cool-off period now to discover her democratic essence.
On the face of it, Senator Ikweremadu’s position would appear not unreasonable, particularly the part that insists the legislature should continue its four-year term (the legislature has no term limit, anyway), to create a two-year gap between legislative and executive elections. But looking at it more closely, his panacea was a fixation with symptoms, rather than a clarity of purpose to root out the problems.
By the senator’s argument, if the executive were to be awarded two — or three — more years (depending on whether six or seven years was settled for), and legislative elections held in 2015, then at least a buffer of two years would have been created. Executive and legislative elections would hold two years apart, and the electoral umpire would have more time to plan, aside from being encumbered with messy general elections. He cited the two-year gap between mid-term legislative elections and general elections in the United States, to ram home his point.
And how might this “award” be accomplished? Not by any election, but by extra-legal tools as the “Doctrine of Necessity” the Senate used to make Goodluck Jonathan acting president, when the players had neither the will nor the inclination to apply the law as it was. To say the least, it is shocking that the Number Two man in Nigeria’s highest legislative chamber would push for the subversion of the law because of short-term seeming convenience.
But beyond that is the Nigerian power elite’s mindset to run away from problems they are handsomely paid to solve, hoping that the problems would disappear. They won’t. Bribing the President and warring governors with two more years, simply because of internal power struggle, is rewarding electoral subversion and power rascality. Every elected official, ab initio, knew both the mode of seeking power and duration of his or her tenure. So, it is no patriotism but clear fraud to move for undemocratic means of tenure extension, for whatever reasons.
Besides, Senator Ekweremadu and the rest of the ruling elite must learn trite lessons about democracy. The voter can mistakenly elect a non-performer. But periodic elections give him the ultimate tool to correct such mistakes. Anything done to short circuit that is anti-democratic. The Senate should therefore devote its energy to ensuring free and fair elections to deepen democracy, instead of looking for easy ways that would eventually worsen the situation.
Chase service, not tenure. Whoever delivers service to his electors is, other things being equal, rewarded with the longest tenure under the law. That was the trite message President Jonathan missed when about the first thing he pushed, after his election, was a seven-year presidential tenure. That is the point Senator Ekweremadu is missing by pushing this already defeated notion.
If by this latest campaign the senator is flying an umpteenth kite, he should remember the futility of pushing a dead horse. The Senate’s deputy president should add value, not waste precious time on constitutional inanities.
